Demi
by VickyVicarious
Summary: Tanuma used to live a life that was half-real, half-dreamed.


Written quickly after watching the first two episodes of season four. I love the mellow bittersweetness of Natsume, and tried somewhat to capture that here.

_Demi-_ because it's a prefix used to mean half of something.

* * *

><p>Tanuma used to live a life that was half-real, half-dreamed. He was always sickly – the fault of the youkai he could only half-see, but which felt more real to him, at times, than any of the people surrounding him. He used to feel alone, desperately alone and half-invisible. He used to imagine that, as time passed, that half would become a hole and he'd fade away forever, lost to the myths that only he knew were real.<p>

Then he met Natsume.

Natsume, a boy even further trapped in the world of shadows than Tanuma. If Tanuma were standing half-in, half-out of the doorway separating the two worlds, then Natsume had long since smashed down the door altogether, for both realities were equally strong to him, and they refused to stay neatly separated. And for all the way his meagre abilities sapped Tanuma's strength, Natsume's far stronger spiritual powers seemed to only bring him more life, more presence and honest reality.

Unexpectedly, this made Tanuma rather jealous. In truth, he shouldn't have been, because most of his negative feelings had come from his loneliness, and with Natsume around that wasn't really an issue anymore. But there was something about that gentle expression on Natsume's voice, that odd wisdom of his, the ever-present aura of sadness lurking about him despite his kindhearted smiles. There was something about the way Natsume spoke so little of his youkai troubles, about the lake he saw out Tanuma's window, about the urgency and, sometimes, fear he would unwittingly display. There was something about the way he dug his fingers into his not-a-cat's fur, and Tanuma realized.

Natsume may have saved him from being alone, but by no means had he saved Natsume. There was an entire world beyond what he knew, and if anyone were ever going to fade away into it, Natsume would be the one and Tanuma would not be able to help. Natsume would never even let him try.

Tanuma lived in a world that was half-real, half-mere shadows of what Natsume saw as sharply as the scenery on a summer day. And that was real too, he just wasn't privileged to see it clearly; he got blurry, dark images and debilitating headaches, and Natsume meanwhile fought for his life, hovered in the air struggling with invisible arms around his neck, and returned bruised and drained, smiling a gentle smile and asking if Tanuma was all right.

The weakness of his body was frustrating beyond description, because it blocked him from the world Natsume inhabited all alone, and yet, after being possessed, Tanuma was grateful for his weakness too. He'd seen Natsume's world, just for a short time, and he had realized the beauty of it, yes, but the danger too, and the sheer alienness of it, and just how little he really accessed it on his own. Tanuma had thought he was half-swallowed up by the youkai world; in reality he barely had his foot in the door, and Natsume's life was one of two world impossibly intertwined.

After meeting Natsume, Tanuma learned the true state of his life. If he'd been fading, it was his own fault, for Natsume endured far more than he ever had and only smiled. If he had been feeling alone, it was nothing compared to Natsume, a boy who found himself rejected by two realities that could not accept each-other, and had no room for a child trapped in the middle. If he'd been half-anything, it was half-asleep, and now he was wide awake and waiting for Natsume to notice.

Tanuma might always be half the person Natsume was, but he was still twice what he'd been before they'd met. And so long as one day, Natsume could feel it was okay to rely on him sometimes, Tanuma was perfectly all right with remaining half-terrified every time Natsume showed up late somewhere, breathing heavily with leaves in his hair. Half-terrified, but at the same time half-happy, because after he caught his breath, Natsume would smile that gentle smile at Tanuma, and he'd stand next to him and he never faded, never grew any less real, but maybe was starting to grow a little less lonely.

Tanuma wasn't half-anything anymore, he was a whole and that whole was someone who was Natsume's friend.

And while the world might blur with shadows beyond his comprehension, his life was more than that now, and _this _reality would never fade.


End file.
